


Five-Year Reunion

by x_los



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: M/M, Post Gauda Prime, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-09
Updated: 2016-04-09
Packaged: 2018-06-01 04:12:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6500299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five years after they attempted to hijack the <i>London</i>, random chance sees Vila, Jenna, Avon and Blake retaking their former prison ship. The circumstances have, of course, altered somewhat: the last time they tried this they didn't have guns, and Blake and Avon were on speaking terms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five-Year Reunion

**Author's Note:**

> beta'd by Elviaprose

It was Jenna who got it first. She began to laugh, and it seemed she couldn't stop, not even when Vila asked 'what, what's funny?'

Then Blake started, and said "oh"; Avon finished with "for god's sake". Odd, Blake thought, what persisted: the habit of finishing one another's sentences, when he no longer trusted he knew what Avon was thinking at all. Some muscle-memory of compatibility or camaraderie, when Avon had changed, and didn't seem to need friends anymore. He'd used to say as much, true, but then it had used to be a lie. Or at least Blake had thought it was, at the time.

Blake hadn't slept well the previous night, too distracted by the phantom pain that often troubled him. But tired as he was (and from the outside, as he'd never seen this ship—under a new coat of paint, and bolted-on second-hand gunnery), Blake still recognized the vessel’s class. It was an old, converted deep space freighter. You could see that it was powered by an early mark hyperdrive. There couldn't be many vessels of this style still in circulation, and this example was in particularly poor shape: the whole lot ought to have been scrapped ages ago.

Realization trickled down: this was the _London_ herself. Stolen, at some point (perhaps even scrapped), and subsequently refitted for piracy. It wasn’t much of a ship, but with those blasters it could hold its own against an unarmed, innocuous rim-runner.

He spoke, and Avon spoke, and Blake thought, ‘why the hell are you still here?’ And he thought, 'well, what are the odds? Small world—didn't you say that to me once?' And he thought 'this is going to be easy.' But it was Avon who said it, even as the words floated up into Blake's mind.

They didn't look at one another, not even when they finished each other’s sentences, because they didn't look at one another much anymore. It didn't mean anything that they still thought along the same lines. After all, it _was_ going to be easy. Any one of the four people on the flight deck could have made the remark, because after all, they all knew the ship in question very well indeed.

It was a blast from the past in multiple respects. Not only was this the _London_ , the ship was also carrying a stolen neutrotope that could save an entire planetary economy. Destiny wasn't the only world vulnerable to the strain of highly communicable parasite that had ravaged her ecosystem: Federation colonial terraforming relied heavily on monocultures with poor long-term disease resistance, and wasn’t so much in conversation with native biospheres as an institutional effort to scream loud enough to drown them out. Anything native and alive on a world selected for colonisation, from microbes to sentient beings, was considered first and foremost an irritant. Superficially, this approach yielded happy crop-production figures. At any sane remove, it also yielded a lot of problems for both the ecosystem and the poor bastards shipped out to live in it. And so another similarly rebel-inclined colony planet had, shockingly enough, been similarly-stricken, and its population had acted to save themselves even as Destiny’s had done. However the ship the colonists had sent to collect the energy refractor they desperately needed hadn't returned. The colonists had reached out to Blake for help after their efforts to help themselves had met with failure: they had, after all, nowhere else to turn.

Blake had set out to discover what had gone wrong. Avon had called it a distraction from their major assault campaign, and Blake had told the other people in the council, rather than tell Avon, that they needed not only to help these people for their own sake, but to show other unaligned planets that they were better off throwing in their lot with the growing rebellion than relying on the Federation in times of crisis.

Blake had asked for volunteers, and had been unsurprised when Jenna, Vila and even Avon had turned up in the hangar on the day he was due to leave. They hadn't signed the roster, but then none of them had ever been particularly good at following orders or at openly declaring their intentions—or with staying in one place for too long. Vila made a lot of noise about being work-shy, but _laziness_ wasn't what had gotten the career-thief exiled.

Blake had been forced to find a graceful way of telling the people who _had_ bothered to volunteer through the proper channels that there had been a mistake, and actually the ship was full up. He knew who he wanted on this sort of mission with him, and it was the people who had (rightly) just assumed there would always be room for them. Blake had a feeling that these three key members of his organization were restless; that transitioning into the leaders of a small army and hopefully, eventually, a government was, in idiosyncratic ways, difficult for each of them. Possibly this small sortie offered them something of a last hurrah.

Or possibly a chance to clear up grievances. Vila, Blake and Jenna were getting along all right with one another, but all three of them were differently at odds with Avon. In a way, Blake was almost glad the problem wasn’t just (‘ _just_ ’) that he and Avon had become something worse than strangers to one another. Avon's crew seemed on a rather professional and cold footing with him, from what Blake had seen, and at times even acted somewhat afraid of him. _Vila_ did—Blake wouldn't have believed _that_ if he hadn't seen it. Yet Vila wouldn't say what his problem was, exactly—some dogged loyalty to Avon, even as he seemed bitterly, sullenly angry with the man.

As for Avon and Jenna, whatever easy affinity had once existed between them seemed to have evaporated in the years they'd been separated. Jenna of course had a _Liberator_ -shaped grudge and questions about Cally, but seemed almost angrier that Avon wouldn't _tell her_ what had occurred in any detail—that she couldn't get anything out of him now. She'd discussed it with Blake, shaking her head.

"I don't know what happened to him," she’d said bluntly, "but it wasn't pretty. It's as though he's been scraped out and filled back up again with dry leaves to give him a bit of shape—I half expect him to go up like _that_ , if you light a match too near him." She'd shaken her head and taken a sip of the drink Blake had poured her. "You know what he told me, when I asked how it had happened? How he’d lost _Liberator_ , and Cally? He said it was some trap of Servalan’s, and that I could see for myself they were both gone. He asked me if I thought Cally had ever enjoyed a particularly long life expectancy, given her line of work and that she’d claimed to want to destroy until she was destroyed. And did I really intend to cry over a ship? God, I could have _hit_ him.”

Jenna had breathed, then continued. “I can't get through to him. It's like he's not even in there anymore. You don't think it's about—" She nodded at Blake's midsection.

"No," Blake said shortly, stretching to ease the pain he felt there. "Or he wouldn't have done it in the first place, would he?"

The doctors had assured Blake that the sensation was all in his mind—that the state of the art medical supplies his people and Avon (who no longer counted in that category) had managed to secure and treat him with in time had left no wounds _to_ ache. There were no scars: physically, it was as though it hadn't happened. But still Blake felt it. Sometimes he could hardly sleep for the singing agony: the feeling that something was _stuck_ in him, under the skin. Some object trapped there, as had sometimes used to happen when old-style operations went wrong.

Blake thought it must have surprised and alarmed Jenna to have lost the strangely fraternal relationship she'd had with Avon, if only because in losing it, she would have been forced to own up to having relied on it in the first place. Blake remembered how guardedly hurt Avon had seemed at the prospect of Jenna's betraying them to the Amagons, and what that implied about the state of their relationship. He thought that probably went both ways. Avon and Jenna were, after all, rather similar in some respects.

Blake didn't think there were words for where he and Avon stood at the moment. He found the wreck of their friendship difficult to think about: as difficult to make yourself do, and as painful if you managed it, as trying to dig bullet fragments out of your own wound (the bullets Avon hadn’t shot him with, the wound he didn’t have). Trying to stay conscious through the pain to do it, when it would have been easier to sleep. Easier to die. Avon didn’t care about the awful tension between them the way he did—Blake knew that. He had _plenty_ of evidence to that effect, _didn’t_ he? Even so, when Blake allowed himself a flicker of stupid, maudlin, obviously unnecessary concern, he thought it must be lonely for Avon—closed out of the circle. But then that was, in Avon’s own words, all he'd ever wanted. To be free of them.

And so the four of them and Deva, the only _official_ volunteer Blake had found room for, had traced what had happened to the colony's ship. Destroyed, but there were emissions: testaments to the explosion. Avon and Jenna had traded clipped observations and pieced together a crash report. The five of them had then tracked the pirates to these co-ordinates.

With a last glance at the _London_ , moving slow and silent across the starfield, Blake called Deva to the flight deck and explained the situation.

"Right back where we started,” Blake finished with a rueful look. “Did you go to your five-year reunion?" he asked Deva, who opened his mouth to respond.

"Who does?" Avon snapped instead. "Anyone you ever wanted to see again, you kept in contact with. The rest of one's secondary school acquaintances are surely best mercifully forgotten."

"Perhaps, but then you don't really have a good track record with old friends, do you?" Blake said cooly. "Deva?"

Deva rolled his shoulders. "I moved off-world in the interim, I'm afraid—I was never faced with that _particular_ social dilemma."

"What's your plan, Blake?" Avon asked, his voice hard.

"What's yours?" Blake fired back. "You're the one who's been engaging in piracy of late—perhaps you'd give us a few pointers?"

"Well now," Avon began, smiling that particularly unpleasant smile he seemed to rely on a lot these days. "I think we ought to stick to the classics. Teleport inside the computer room. Armed, this time, of course."

"We could hit them where the asteroids did damage," Vila suggested. "They won't have changed that hull plating. Good repair work doesn't come cheap."

"And why do preventative maintenance when you can just keep flying until the thing falls apart?" Jenna said grimly. "It’s not a bad idea, but personally, I'm for taking out that hyperdrive."

"It could blow," Blake reminded her.

" _Could?_ " Avon sneered. " _That_ is the surest way of destroying the entire vessel.”

Jenna arched an eyebrow at him. "Well, you'd know about that.”

Avon flinched almost imperceptibly. “Do it, and there will be no neutrotope to retrieve."

“Actually,” Jenna said, her voice cool, “I meant we ought to disable the links between the drive and the infrastructure—nothing built this century doesn’t have good enough containment systems to shut down the energy intakes and outtakes when the connections go down. A light touch of the laser there," she tapped the image of the ship, "would do it.” She regarded Avon. “Do you still have steady hands?"

Blake, who was thinking of Avon firing at him, and how still Avon had been when he'd fallen into Avon’s arms—dying, then, for all medicine had made it meaningless (oh, but it wasn't meaningless to _him_ ), was surprised when Avon said, very flatly, "I wouldn't want to risk it.”

“Not," Avon quickly amended himself, "when we have better alternatives."

So Avon didn't trust his hands anymore. Interesting. Blake filed the information away for future use, because it didn’t do to wonder why.

"We ought to take the flight deck," Blake said decisively. "It combines computer and engine control, Vila can secure the door, we don't risk ripping the side off by firing on that weak paneling, and we know how. We did consider it, if you recall. We've weapons, now, and a teleport." Blake swallowed, managing to make it fast. Keeping it subtle, he hoped. "Gan's initial objections shouldn’t be a problem anymore."

"All right," Jenna said, falling in.

"Piece of cake," Vila agreed. "Though you've got to cover me—I'll need my hands free for the lock."

"Objections?" Blake asked, not looking at the man who'd yet to speak.

"No," Avon said.

"Deva, you're all right with the ship?" Blake asked.

Deva raised an eyebrow.

"Stupid question," Blake agreed, smiling at him. "Let's get to it."

***

Avon thought it was a little pathetic, really. The pirates had stood no chance whatsoever against them. Not only did the four of them know the vessel, and, this time, have the use of excellent resources, but he, Blake, Vila and Jenna were all very good at what they did, and had gotten far better at it in the last five years.

In the end, it was a neatly choreographed ballet that made their first attempt to take the _London_ look childish. They’d gained on the vessel after leaving the site of the colony ship’s destruction with their Plaxton drive, snuck up on it in their own detector-shielded ship, and teleported on board with the system salvaged from _Scorpio_ and guns given them by Mida of Lovis, a warlord Avon remained on good trading terms with. Vila, who Avon had also brought Blake, sealed the door of the flight deck when they’d secured it.

This, Avon thought, is at least material: here are the things I've given and restored to you, Blake. An incomplete inventory; a deeply imperfect apology. But then we wouldn't need one if you hadn't left, would we?

Avon snapped the spine of the computer and thought, did I ever think this was difficult? Did I ever, privately, wonder if I could manage this in the time allotted? I can hardly imagine it now.

What was this toy to fixing _Liberator_ or _Scorpio_? What was this system to Orac? Transparent and rudimentary.

How easily Jenna had flown the ship on manual, too good to require any computer assistance. "Weak aft hull," she muttered to herself, absently routing away from the small space debris field ahead of them. "Not even compensating with the flight plan. Some people have no idea what they're doing."

"I wonder if they ever bothered to take the corpse out," Avon muttered to himself absently, thinking of asteroid fields and what had been Nova's end. What had almost been his. No, they probably hadn’t. Why bother?

A moment later Avon became aware that Jenna was looking at him with a deeply disgusted expression. He ran the last thing he’d said back over again in his head.

Ah. He supposed that was—insensitive. But there had been a lot of bodies between then and now, for him, and his fibers had rather coarsened. Avon didn't think he had much left in the way of sensibilities. Just shrieking operatic heights and depths, balanced against vast, stretching planes of flat apathy. He didn't blame Jenna: he didn't much care for the landscape either. (No wonder Blake could hardly speak to him. And yet every word Blake said lingered, for Avon, more than anyone else's voice could: seemed to hum in the air, persisting, so that his phrases layered over themselves. Surely the sound lasted longer than the noise of a human voice ought to? Avon’s mind was crowded with echoes: he had to work, now, to disentangle what Blake had said in a conversation. Blake’s voice seemed to _weigh_ more that other voices. It hurt Avon to listen, and still he craved Blake’s speaking to him with a wretched, animal hunger. Each time they fell into sync with one another, despite all of this, struck Avon as unearned, inexplicable: an accident or a minor miracle. ‘Missed’ didn’t cover it, not at all.)

And for his part, how easily Blake had convinced the pirates to surrender the neutrotope, worth several fortunes as it was. Avon just stood back and watched the awful pageant, the effortless display. Blake was excellent at being himself. Blake was so very good at winning.

Sometimes Avon had wondered, in Blake’s absence, if he'd imagined or inflated how easily things came to Blake. What standing near him (at his side) felt like. And the instant he'd stood near Blake again, he'd remembered that no, he hadn't even slightly exaggerated the effect. Blake's presence was overwhelming and confusing and Avon had broken under it, under the thought that Blake could have betrayed him. That _Blake_ could have. Blake's stupid, senseless 'it's me' had made Avon think _yes_ , yes it _is_ , and don't you understand how _that_ makes the possibility you've sold me impossible to bear? Far worse than if anyone else should do it—how could I think _you’d_ hurt me and stay sane?

Perhaps Blake had heard that comment about Nova, because Blake had, with his rage on a low boil (and that damned sense of _ease_ wrapping around him, like a coat against the elements), threatened, if the ship's captain didn't tell them where he'd hidden the neutrotope, to shove the man into the service channel and to then instruct his own ship to fire, causing a microfissure in that compartment. Avon knew Blake was bluffing about the precision of their ship's lasers; the captain didn't.

"It'd be easy to puncture the hull," Blake said, matter of fact. (And so it would be, Avon thought, holding his face impassive.) "You know what sort of shape this ship is in. And I'd have little compunction about doing it, given that you were quite willing to doom an entire planet of innocent people to starvation for your personal gain. Perhaps you should enjoy a similarly prolonged demise?” Blake raised an eyebrow. “As you probably know, when these hulls get punctured, the damaged section floods with sealing gel. You'd either drown in it or be walled in—I don't quite know what to call it. The point is, it'll pour in slowly, so you'll have plenty of time to think about whether refusing to tell me where the neutrotope was was really worth it. Time to wonder what the point of all this was. Whether it was worth dying for. If the people you're doing it for or whatever you hoped to achieve was worth _this_."

"But that," Blake said, his voice steady and his eyes blazing, "isn't what you'll think at the end. At the end, all you'll think is that it's tight and wet and cold, and that you can’t _move_ . There’ll be nowhere to run, of course. You won't be able to breathe. Your eyes will still be open when it happens. If you scream, that’s your mouth filling up. It will _hurt_ . And when you go, you'll be _utterly_ alone. So, captain. Are you quite sure you don't want to tell us where the neutrotope is?"

The captain swallowed, and offered to show them after all.

"Thank you," Blake said with polite gravity, and when they had the crew confined in the galley that had once held the four of them as prisoners, Blake, without prompting and without looking at Avon, said "I wouldn't have.”

“No,” Avon agreed, keeping his voice devoid of tone. Of course he knew that.

“But,” Blake said as they walked away, “I've given dying like that an awful lot of thought."

It had been Nova. But it had almost been him.

*******

Blake and I, Avon thought wryly, are ludicrously good together. In this, if in nothing else. Even angry with me past reckoning, I can see why he doesn't tell me to go to hell. Why he hasn't tried sending me away, even though he must want to (not that I would actually go). I'm indifferently effective on my own—I ought to be better, but I'm not. There it is. Blake has better luck, but the same is generally true of him. Together, however, we are quite literally the stuff legends are made of. It didn't feel like it from the inside, the first time, but then with any distance I found it difficult to believe what we'd achieved together. There again, we’ve done more in the last months than in the previous two years, even like this—barely able to speak to one another.

The pirates were securely locked down, and Jenna and Vila were on the sealed-off flight deck, monitoring the situation and keeping the ship flying on manual. He and Blake were in the computer room: Blake wanted the ship's drive and its communications hobbled, and the vessel sent inexorably towards a populated, civilized system, blaring a data-stream warning about the hostile people on board. Blake aimed to get the pirates into the hands of a penal system. They had more than enough food and fuel for such a journey.

It was a tricky set of requests, but Avon was locking them in. Blake seemed to have come with Avon to monitor him: to ensure he was doing as Blake had asked.

You don't trust me anymore, Avon thought, feeling simultaneously wretched and distant from it (And Avon hoped, _hoped_ that this wouldn’t be one of the times his hands betrayed him by shaking—not with Blake watching.). Well, why should you? It probably says more for your intelligence than—

Shut up, Avon told himself. Just shut up. Don't try to make it easier, don't lie where no one can even hear you, simply because you've gotten into the habit of it. You don't deserve to evade this. Blake doesn't trust you anymore. Not even to perform a simple, humane, reasonable and risk-free task. Of all the people in the universe, _Blake_ does not trust _you_. Let yourself feel that, totally. _That_ is what's come of it. Of all of this.

Even having made this resolution, Avon found himself picking a fight with Blake, just because the childish routine of being awful to him was familiar. Almost fond, in that it was Avon’s tried and tested method of getting Blake to respond to him. He thought, even as he did it, that he did not and could not possibly care about the matter of the debate: the fate of the pirates, and the externalities that allowing them to live would bring about. These were minor concerns. If they weren't, Avon would have voiced them before Jenna and Vila. Allowed them to weigh in, to support his position. They were, as they had ever been, practical and healthily self-interested people. But knowing that he didn't mind one way or another, Avon dug in punishingly hard, reminding Blake that he hadn't been so kindly disposed towards the pirates that had attacked the _Ortega_. What brought on this sudden flash of mercy? Was Blake perhaps growing sentimental in his old age?

Then, of course, when he'd idly tested Blake's patience, Avon asked a procedural question and realized that he had a _real_ grievance to raise. Blake wanted the ship pointed towards the nearest inhabited system, which happened to be Federation-controlled. Something, Blake pointed out, could go wrong, and they didn’t want these people needlessly dead (pirates though they were) if they could possibly help it. The less time this ship spent drifting blind, the better. Avon acknowledged that the direct risk to them from these pirates being interrogated by the Federation was slight, given that the crew knew little about Blake and company and their activities. Even so, slight wasn't none, and Avon would have preferred to direct the ship to a somewhat further away, neutral system.

Blake battered at Avon's resistance, and was on the point of forcing Avon to give way and do as he wanted. They were both crouched in front of the computer on their knees, and Avon sat down abruptly.

"Didn’t they used to call it déjà vu? We have been here before.”

Blake opened his mouth to make an obvious remark about Avon having just noticed, and Avon cut him off.

“I mean, with you insisting that I yield our safety for that of people we neither know nor care about. You and I are always here, as though we never left this room. Every time, you _must_ win. Can't you ever let me have _one?_ " Avon hissed. "And don't pretend you don't understand why I give in. It certainly isn't because I think you are ultimately right, in every case."

"Oh I know you don't think that," Blake snapped, sitting himself,anger gathering in him. "I certainly remember all the times you've shot me down. Metaphorically speaking, of course," he said with a particularly nasty pleasant expression.

"Good," Avon said, smiling tightly at Blake, the way he knew Blake hated. He watched Blake's eyes narrow with dislike with some satisfaction. "Because I have been wondering, Blake. How long are you and I going to do this?"

"Going to do _what?_ " Blake asked, his voice low and dangerous.

"Let us at least have it out in the open, just this once," Avon said, grinning wider and tighter. "As we age it risks becoming ridiculous. Come now, Blake, surely you could say this for me. You know I always give in because... ?"

"I'm not playing games with you, Avon," Blake said quite coldly.

"No," Avon said, "no, I've noticed. You—" he swallowed, "barely speak to me. As punishments go, it isn't bad. Nothing, of course, to spending two years trying to mold me into a shape that suited you, and then abandoning me for another two years—"

"Mold _you?_ " Blake shouted. "I never altered you an iota. _Give in?_ You wouldn't lift a finger to please me. Oh I'll admit, I tried to argue you around where it mattered, because I _thought_ you could come to care about what I did. But obviously, I was wrong. Congratulations, Avon. In some ways, you're utterly immutable."

"Wouldn't I?" Avon seethed. "What the hell is there left to do that I haven't done for you?"

"And as for ‘abandoning you’,” Blake gave a scornful huff at _that_ , “you forced me out! You can't abandon someone who tells you they want, more than anything, never to see you again. I'm sorry if you inconvenienced yourself checking under a few rocks for me. I’m _sorry_ there wasn't a way of leaving you a _damn note_ ," Blake snarled, "it all _happened rather fast_."

"You've _no_ idea what I did, looking for you. But as for forcing you out, you'd never paid attention to that sort of thing before. Why should you have done on that occasion? Besides, you _knew_ I didn't mean it," Avon said, curling his fists. "You _always_ knew."

"What am I supposed to have known? That when you told me to drown in blood, to fuck off to the outer planets and die there, you meant 'should we get separated, please come home?' What the hell it _meant_ when you looked at me like you cared for me and said that? Am I supposed to understand that you're sorry now about having shot me? To try and sympathize with how much it hurts _you_ to have done that to me? Or is it that I ought to have understood that you came in damaged? As though I didn’t—as though I _failed_ you by taking you at your word. Well you can go to _hell_ , Avon. I'm not a mind-reader, and I'm not impervious to anything—especially not to you. And I have my own crosses to bear. You _really_ don't have a monopoly on pain." Blake could feel he was almost crying, furious and wretched.

Avon felt like he'd been slapped. His jaw worked with rage. "You never loved me like I loved you," he said, quiet and dangerous. "You _never_ did."

"Oh _fuck you_ , Avon," Blake snarled, suddenly doing it into Avon's mouth as Avon smashed his into Blake's, twisting his hands into Blake's jacket.

"Will you?" Avon asked, nasty and insinuating and sarcastic. "Will you really, at last? Let's have it all out—why shouldn't we?" He worked himself closer to Blake, as though if he tried hard enough, if he found the trick of it, he could sink into Blake’s skin. "Not with anyone, are you?”

No one to betray? Avon thought. Not fucking your new computer technician, who you smile at when you should be looking at me? Just exactly when you used to do it?

" _No_ ," Blake growled, shoving a hand without preamble down into Avon's trousers, which he’d rapidly unfastened, and another into Avon's hair, keeping Avon where he was, their eyes inches from one another's. "Not that it's any of your business, considering what you did to me. And who's had _you_ while I was off straggling through the outer rim alone? Almost losing my damn eye—I hope you're _happy_. I hope you loved making all those wonderful decisions I was always too _stupid_ to make."

"Bastard," Avon hissed as Blake grabbed his cock, as he did the same to Blake. "You _bastard_ , you were supposed to let me find you, you've no idea what it did to me when I couldn't find you, I lost my fucking _mind_ and where the _hell_ were you—"

"Av'n," Blake said as Avon tightened his grip pitilessly around Blake's cock, as though he'd never let him go again, never let him out of his sight, never stop touching him. Avon choked—it was the first time Blake had said his name in that familiar, fond way for so long, so _long_. Blake bit Avon's neck, the gesture angry and possessive, and it ripped through Avon like Blake's assured hand on his cock. They did this easily, as though they'd always touched each other.

"I love you," Blake said into Avon's ear, rumbling it low and angry—Avon felt himself twitch under it, his whole body snapping against Blake's. "How could you do any of that to me when I always told you what I was and I only ever loved you? How," He stroked Avon hard, "could you lie to me? Again and again, you said you didn't care, showed you didn't care."

Avon kissed him to stop him saying that, and came shuddering, breathing Blake's own name into his mouth like he was giving it back to him. Blake was so close, but Avon nevertheless shook his head in a frantic, wordless denial and clumsily shoved Blake down to the floor and his own mouth down around Blake's cock, wrapping his fingers around Blake's. He had to have Blake in him, and they hadn't any other way at present. Blake came fast and Avon thought _out of practice_ and **_good_** , and felt a rageful tenderness that insisted, quite madly, that he couldn't be ignored or left behind, not if he had Blake in him like this.

He tried to stagger up, after, and Blake pulled him back down. Avon struggled on instinct. The weak physical fight ended with Blake lying half on top of him, pressing him against the floor, the both of them breathing hard.

"I ought to have fucked _you_ into the ground years ago," Avon remarked on their situation, knowing his anger was subsiding and suspecting horribly that what he'd just said must sound almost pouty.

"And clarify your position?” Blake scoffed incredulously. But it was softer, now, than it had been. Blake’s rage had seemingly matured into something more complicated—no less intense, but rounder. More thoughtful. Gentle: a heavy, solemn gentleness, under everything he said, wrapping around every barb and stray quotidian nothing. The scattered, bewildering reverberations in Blake’s voice seemed to have been condensed into this underlayer, leaving Blake’s voice, if anything, heavier than it had been. Avon wondered if other people heard that—at all, or differently, or if it was something he alone understood by virtue of where he stood in relation to the subject.

“Whereas I ought to have slapped you at any one of several points in this conversation," Blake countered, rubbing his face against Avon's hair in a way that indicated an inability to raise a hand against him. But then Avon had learned that, the day he’d shot Blake.

"What," Avon said after a moment, "do you intend to do next?"

"What do you want to happen?" Blake asked slowly. "Here we are, back at the beginning. How should it have gone?"

Avon rolled over to look at Blake, and Blake let himself be studied. Older, heavier, scarred. It was inappropriate to say he 'still wanted’ Blake, as though this were happening in spite of some objective diminishment of Blake's appeal. What he felt for Blake wasn't a question of arbitrary external standards, of attraction in conventional forms: it was elemental and foundational. Blake was older now, and looked it, and Avon supposed he would probably love Blake without alteration until such time as his consciousness ceased. Even knowing that, he caught Blake studying _him_ in parallel and thought god I hope I got rid of all the grey, and consciously smoothed his tender expression into something more nonchalant to disguise any lines in his face.

Well now, how to answer Blake’s question? It was difficult to consider their younger selves: their initial meeting felt both immediate and unfathomably long ago. Here they'd been, rather more vertically positioned, and the guards had been executing prisoners to try and rout them.

"Perhaps we'll try honesty this time," Avon said, his expression a touch whimsical. "You will ask me to do something that puts us at risk for the benefit of others, as usual. And I'll simply tell you, ‘well, Blake, I suppose I'll do it, against my better judgment. Because some part of me reluctantly agrees, and, of course, because I am in love with you.’"

Blake smiled at him, and Avon thought god, I missed that. " _That_ is breaking character," Blake pointed out. "We're still early days."

Avon winced. "Actually, I'm afraid it isn't. You were standing there," he waved a hand, "when I realised what the problem was. I was thinking that the most important thing in the situation was to ensure that we got out all right. And then I realized I'd thought we, not I—and who precisely 'we' consisted of for me. It developed from there, but it was also irrevocable. It was always 'we', from that point on. When I said they might leave you, I meant the rest of them. There was a good deal of theatre, I will admit, but _that_ is the truth."

"Well," Blake said slowly, "so that’s what you might have said, is it? As it _is_ so early on, I'm afraid _I_ don't love you yet. I think you're certainly clever, and that I have to have you on-side. I know I need to figure out a way to do it after we've taken the ship—that I have to find some way to make you see. Oh I think you're very attractive, of course, and thirty seconds of conversation with you has been more than enough to make me think we really ought to have sex—but I don't love you yet.” Blake considered it seriously. “I'm not yet sure what sort of man you are. I haven't thought about what it cost you to prioritize other people above yourself, and what that means about whether ultimately, you’ll always choose that where you can. It's going to take time for me to brood on it and see that decision for what it was—I have a lot of brooding over what you say and do to get through in my near future. So I don't love you, not just yet."

Blake threaded a hand through Avon's hair, and held his gaze. Avon was finding it difficult to breathe. He could feel himself shaking after all—a fine trembling, really. Just slightly, but Blake, who was touching him, would certainly be able to feel it.

"I know you're sharp, but I don't yet know how much I’m going to love your sense of humor. I know you take risks, but I don't know you're brave. I don't see the loyalty, just yet. I don't see the sensuality, because you're terrified. I don't even know enough to know you _are_ terrified. But even now, I think the most important thing is trying to get everyone through this, and then keeping you. I think you're an incredible piece of luck, and that I can't let you know I think it. It's funny,” Blake said with a very soft smile, “but the whole structure of my life is starting to reshape itself around you, and I don't even know I love you yet."

"When will you?" Avon asked quietly, feeling incapable of adequate response to this complete inventory, this perfect apology. This list of things _Blake_ had given and restored to _him_. He wanted to look away from Blake, but refused the self-protective impulse.

Blake frowned and considered it. "I'm not entirely sure. Soon, but I don't have a day to give you. It feels easier and more honest to say 'always'. And given that—are we going to be all right, Avon?"

Avon smiled, a little—a real one to match Blake’s expression of a moment ago, not the manic, brittle mask of a grin. "You and I?” He borrowed Blake’s tone—a language he was going to have to learn and relearn and make his own. He could hear a trace of Blake’s gentleness under his own words: his own variant, but audible. “Aren't we always." They had, after all, wound up here. Despite everything.

"We're going to be," Blake agreed. "We're going to _have_ to be. Because I'm sorry," he knit his hand with Avon's again. "And I do love you."

"And I am sorry," Avon repeated like a ritual, feeling his cadence slip into something formal and stilted. It was still difficult to say—it took so much out of him. He was sorrier than he could express. "And I—do love you.” That too exceeded his capacities. He paused for a moment. “And I still think you ought to aim for a neutral system."

Blake laughed more than the remark deserved, the sound of it all relief and hope, and sat up. "All right. Have it your way."

"Thank you," Avon said crisply, as though he wasn't hoarse from shouting, neatening himself reflexively (discovering, in the process, that Blake carried, of all things, a pocket handkerchief) and returning to the alterations. Blake cleaned himself up and leaned against Avon as Avon finished.

"This jacket has too many metal bits to be comfortable," Blake groused.

Avon sighed dramatically. Theatre again, but he supposed that was all right, when you'd picked the show. "I suppose I could get a different jacket," he allowed grudgingly. "For you."

***

How, Blake wondered from his position against the man’s side, could he have thought Avon was wholly _different?_ Maybe that had been a piece of self-protection, on his part. ‘It wasn’t Avon who hurt me, or at least it wasn’t the Avon I know—not the one I love.’ But here he was—the quick, unchanged grace of his hands as he did familiar work. The rhythm of his breathing, the smell of his skin. The hesitation and instant decision in his eyes. All the new fronts embellishments on the old, and the interiors just as they had been. Guilt and fear and affection and amusement—shifted a few degrees, but recognizable. All within the compass of Avon.

Bad decisions, on both their parts. Things to work through and move past. And they would. That was what life was for: not a distraction, but the whole activity of it.

Speaking of which.

“What’s between you and Vila? Why’s he angry with you, I mean.”

Avon stiffened. Blake felt that tremor again (softer, now), and thought it didn’t show under the jacket, and thought Avon was dressing up, these days—wearing things that made him look like he wanted to feel.

“I prioritized my life over his,” Avon said as he continued to work. “In a manner he might have expected. Nonetheless, I—am ashamed of what I almost did. Ashamed that I let it come to that point. And that I tried to mask how the situation affected me by treating it rather casually, after the fact. Which, of course, only made matters worse. It isn’t—” he cut himself off and breathed.

Blake let him have that moment of silence, and afterwards, Avon continued. “That is not—and I’m aware this is comparatively petty—how I should like to think of myself. At some point I became careless of my debts. Of the few people who matter to me, personally. I know _why_ ,” he nearly snarled, but kept working, kept looking at the circuits, “though I don’t imagine _you_ know quite how bad things became, during the period you were away. But even so.”

“Perhaps I don’t,” Blake allowed. “Do you want to tell me what happened?” He asked.

Avon shook his head, no. “Yes,” he corrected himself, “but—not now. Let it come out in pieces. It will be easier. I think you’ll understand it better, that way, and that I—could better bear to discuss it, in increments.”

“All right,” Blake agreed. “As far as Vila goes, you know that if you apologise, it’ll go some way towards mending things with him. But given that you know that and haven’t done it, I imagine that you don’t want to be forgiven.”

Avon smiled, obliquely. “You’ve no idea how strange it is to be anticipated again. Other people seem to find me difficult.”

“Oh, you are difficult,” Blake said with amused warmth, “just not to figure out. Well,” he granted, “in some respects. But it’s not doing either of you any good to half hate each other—it’s certainly not some service to Vila.” Who  _hated_ conflict, really.

“No,” Avon conceded. “Put like that, I suppose it isn’t.”

“You’ll do it, then?”

“Talk to him?” Avon asked, putting the probe down, finished, and letting Blake hand him the panel cover. “Yes, I imagine I will. It has to happen sooner or later, doesn’t it?”

“And Jenna,” Blake reminded him. “You could come to her with a bottle of rotgut, two glasses, and the real story.”

Avon sighed and leaned back into Blake. “What makes you think she’ll like that any better?”

“Because,” Blake said, shifting to accommodate him, “I know you, and the sort of decisions you make. And I know that whatever happened was a misjudgement, and an awful accident, but that you did it for good reasons.”

“I fell into Servalan’s trap because she said you were there,” Avon said quietly, not looking at Blake. “She said,” his mouth twisted, “I had made it easy. And she was right. Against my better judgement, I wanted quite desperately to believe that you’d call me for help. That something had simply gone wrong. That you wanted to come back.”

It hit Blake like a blow, and Avon, against his body, felt the impact—the crushing tightening in Blake’s chest. “That,” Avon said, his voice still quiet, “is part of why I—didn’t want to say anything about it.”

Protecting him. That was especially awful. “I’m sorry,” Blake said, voice quiet and raw.

“And I love you,” Avon said, his own voice steadier. “And we are going to be all right, in the end. I’ll talk to Jenna.”

Blake nodded and kissed his temple. “Ready to escape?”

“Quite.”

Blake grinned at him. “I told you I’d try and do better next time.”

Avon thought for a second, then laughed.  “So you did. And Jenna said I could die content, knowing I was right.” Though of course Blake had extricated them in the end: a feat they were about to repeat.

“I hope you do,” Blake said generously, standing and offering Avon a hand up, “when we’re very much advanced in years.”

“Mm,” Avon agreed, taking it. “In the meantime, I’ve found richer satisfactions.”


End file.
